Behemoth Crew Compliment?

Reading the thread I'm suprised at how many people consider the T-bomb scheme superior to the use of Behemoth. Confed developed the Behemoth because it's not a one-trick pony like the T-bomb. With the bomb, you can only destroy a tectonically unstable planet, and I imagine the specifications had to fit into a rather slim margin.

With the big gun, you've got yourself a true superweapon. Both projects may have been developed to destroy Kilrah, but would the Behemoth not also be useful if the conflict had continued for some reason? Or perhaps in another war altogether? That ship had the capability of destroying any planet, starbase, or capship imaginable. Imagine a Hvar'kann dreadnaught captain trying to figure out what that funny-looking ship is half a second before his boat is desintegrated, or the Nephilim having comparatively pathetic ship-killing guns. It's just a pity the project didn't get completed. Given enough laser turrets, shielding, and maybe a few anti-matter guns for dealing with pesky corvettes it would have been pretty spectacular imao. ^^

As for the Concordia class, weren't there a lot more than five of them ever built? Or are most of the ship names listed made up and non-canon? With so many fleet carriers I would think that there'd be nearly as many, if not more, light carriers in the Ranger class, but perhaps I'm mistaken.

TCS Ark Royal (destroyed, 2668)
TCS Armaggedon
TCS Concordia (class leader, destroyed 2634)
TCS Hermes (destroyed, 2669)
TCS Invincible
TCS Kalamazoo
TCS Lexington (CV-44)
TCS Liberty (scrapped, 2672)
TCS Princeton (CV-48) (captured by Border Worlds 2673)
TCS Valiant (destroyed, 2669)
TCS Washington (destroyed, 2667)
TCS Winterrowd (destroyed, 2669)
 
I think we need to be careful considering the Behemoth in the same vein as the Death Star :)

This is an area where the novel and the game offer slightly different interpretations of how the Behemoth works. The game does lead us to believe that the weapon can destroy any planet, per the conversation between Eisen, Tolwyn, and Blair in the briefing where the plan is announced.

The novel, however, uses the same techtonic (sp.?) instability as the reason for the ability to use both the Behemoth and the T-bomb, per Kevin Tolwyn's briefing of Blair and Eisen. (It has been a little while since I read the book, and I am at work so I don't have the copy with me, but this is how I remember it.)

Long story short, I don't believe that Behemoth would work on any planet, just ones with similiar techtonic issues to Kilrah.

Quick note: 5 Confederation class dreadnoughts were presumably built, not Concordia class carriers...
 
Drakon said:
Reading the thread I'm suprised at how many people consider the T-bomb scheme superior to the use of Behemoth.
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Considering the T-Bomb actually worked, that's a view fairly supported by the facts.

Confed developed the Behemoth because it's not a one-trick pony like the T-bomb. With the bomb, you can only destroy a tectonically unstable planet, and I imagine the specifications had to fit into a rather slim margin.
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Even tought the Behemoth has a large scope, both had the same purpose, to destroy Kilrath and win the war. Especially on WC3 when we were being defeated.

Imagine a Hvar'kann dreadnaught captain trying to figure out what that funny-looking ship is half a second before his boat is desintegrated, or the Nephilim having comparatively pathetic ship-killing guns.
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The Behemoth is massive, could it even be used to target other capships that way?

It's just a pity the project didn't get completed. Given enough laser turrets, shielding, and maybe a few anti-matter guns for dealing with pesky corvettes it would have been pretty spectacular imao. ^^
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I wonder if Confed could have the kind of firepower required to push an entire fleet into the Kilrah system so the Behemoth could be deployed. There's no way to tell if, even without Hobbes' treason, it would actually work. Blair and his wing were able to bypass most of the Kilrathi defences, while the Behemoth and escort fleet would have to fight trought.

In the end, however, Confed did the right thing, and had two secret weapons, in case the first one failed. A lesson most sci-fi powers seem to ignore.
 
Fair enough, all interesting, well-considered points... I didn't know that the novel diversed from WC3 on the matter so that and the correction with the carrier class name clears things up for me pretty fast, sorry. :D

The only thing I'd press then just in the spirit of debate is that wouldn't the Behemoth make a very handsome fleet centerpiece for Confed., especially if more keels had been laid down? Even though there's no specs for the ship, if you compare Victory to her it's easy to see that while enormous, she's still quite a bit smaller than the official specs for the Kilrathi dreadnaughts already in service. Maybe with improved mobility and adjusted power settings it would make an excellent dreadnaught/carrier-buster and ground bombardment platform as well?

Going back to the thread's start, while the ship was minimaly manned as was stated before, are there not many decks of servicable area? Or is it more of a scaling issue in the game? Wouldn't there also have to be means to access the rear areas of the barrel itself too since it'd be pretty pathetic if the tech people couldn't get at any troublesome components in the weapon to do repairs and maintanence from the far aft of the ship? That'd mean even more habitable spaces. What do you think? More or less than 400 crew on a ship more than 10 kilometers long?
 
I don't think that the Kilrathi knew that the t-bomb would only work on Kilrah. In False Colors at one point one of Ragark's advisors mentions that they need to be careful because Confed has the ability to make more t-bombs and could threaten his small enclave. I'll look into digging up the quote later.
 
Reading the thread I'm suprised at how many people consider the T-bomb scheme superior to the use of Behemoth. Confed developed the Behemoth because it's not a one-trick pony like the T-bomb. With the bomb, you can only destroy a tectonically unstable planet, and I imagine the specifications had to fit into a rather slim margin.
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Even today we rarely define the superior weapon as the one capable of killing the most people.:) In any event, the Heart of the Tiger novelization claims that the Behemoth was also designed to destroy tectonically unstable planets - which is why the Victory was scouting Ariel early in the game.

With the big gun, you've got yourself a true superweapon. Both projects may have been developed to destroy Kilrah, but would the Behemoth not also be useful if the conflict had continued for some reason? Or perhaps in another war altogether? That ship had the capability of destroying any planet, starbase, or capship imaginable. Imagine a Hvar'kann dreadnaught captain trying to figure out what that funny-looking ship is half a second before his boat is desintegrated, or the Nephilim having comparatively pathetic ship-killing guns. It's just a pity the project didn't get completed. Given enough laser turrets, shielding, and maybe a few anti-matter guns for dealing with pesky corvettes it would have been pretty spectacular imao. ^^
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It's certainly possible that more Behemoths were built - I believe Origin's Official Guide to Wing Commander Prophecy refers to it in the present tense at one point (comparing the Tiamat to ships in the Confederation's inventory). Still, one also imagines that it would be rare for a many-mile-long ship to be able to get the jump on a similarly sized enemy ship.

As for the Concordia class, weren't there a lot more than five of them ever built? Or are most of the ship names listed made up and non-canon? With so many fleet carriers I would think that there'd be nearly as many, if not more, light carriers in the Ranger class, but perhaps I'm mistaken.
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The five (or six, rather - it was the Concordia and five others) refers to the Confederation class, the Phase Transit Cannon arjmed dreadnaughts seen in Wing Commander II. The list you've included below *is* mostly non-canon, though... those are all names of *carriers* (or in some cases just ships) referenced in Wing Commander - but a specific class isn't known for most of them.

The Behemoth is massive, could it even be used to target other capships that way?
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We don't know, but I doubt it somewhat - the much, much smaller Sivar dreadaught couldn't target individual ships.
 
Are there any specifications about the Behemoth?

Is it larger than the Midway, for example? (the midway's lenght is 1830 m, if i recall correctly)
 
There are no specifications for it. The only version of Joans that includes the Behemoth is in the Japanese WC3 PSX Official Guide... and it just lists everything as 'classified'.

It's either 8 or 11 km long in the game - no one seems very sure about that...
 
Kind of a related question, but are the CGI scenes to scale? I remember the victory jumping with the Behemoth and the thing looked massive. If it is to scale, a frozen screen shot might be able to give us a better idea of it's size.
 
Even better, at the start of a mission why not afterburn from one end of the flight deck to the other and time it? A ratio could be found between the time it took and the length of the Victory, and then if one afterburns down the length of Behemoth her length could be revealed... if the person flies parallel to her and starts and stops at the right points, that is. I'd do it myself just out of curiosity, but my Mac is in a box somewhere in the attic. :D

I don't know if the CGI scenes are to scale though, because loaf just mentioned the numbers "8" and "11" and when I compared the 3/4 km light carrier to Behemoth it appeared closer to 16... on the other hand, scaling with a paperweight and eyeballing the angles isn't exactly pure science. :p
 
I believe WC3 has three internal scales - fighter, capital ship and big capital ship (Behemoth and Dreadnaught). To find the Behemoth's internal length you need to first find out how many in-game units long the 22km Kilrathi ship is.
 
Delance said:
Are the game engine scales the same as the FMV sequences?
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I'm not sure what you're asking. What loaf's saying is that fighters compare to each other, the same for capships and then again for the two very large ships. The Confed Light Carrier and Kilrathi Dreadnought are not all that differently sized in the game engine, but the Kilrathi Dreadnought is much much larger in FMV, so it doesn't seem that the same scaling issues apply there. Without having to generate models in real time, the artists making the CGI cutscenes were free to scale things closer to the real values.
 
Reading the thread I'm suprised at how many people consider the T-bomb scheme superior to the use of Behemoth.
Click to expand...

Considering the T-Bomb actually worked, that's a view fairly supported by the facts.
Click to expand...

I'm one of those who would've chosen the Behemoth over the T-Bomb. If all it involved was Blair and his wing making it to Kilrah, I would favor the T-Bomb. It also involved secretly building several asteroid bases stocked with weapons, thorough reconaissance of the planet Kilrah, and (I hope I'm not mis-remembering with this last one) sucessfully positioning and maintaining satellites in orbit of the planet Kilrah. I could mention the additional uncertainty of rescuing from the Kilrathi the scientist necessary for it's construction. I wouldn't argue this as a variable because I assume he wasn't captured at the time the T-Bomb plan was created. To me, the T-Bomb project involves more variables than getting a big ship close enough to the planet to fire.

I agree the fact that the Behemoth didn't work and the T-Bomb did is a powerful argument. Most agree that the Behemoth suffered a huge setback from Hobbes' espionage. That had nothing to do with the plan's merit. The T-Bomb would've been easier for the Kilrathi to sabotage if they had as much knowledge, since they would simply destroy the forward bases and satellites with little or no opposition to prevent them.

I think the T-Bomb succeeded over the Behemoth despite the odds. You're more likely to pull out one of the four aces from a deck of cards than you are a single joker. Despite this, sometimes you might pull out the single joker. It doesn't mean it's more probable if the one time you drew, it happened to be the joker.

Perhaps Tolwyn had similar feelings of frustration over the Behemoth's failure and the T-Bomb's success. His WCIV quote that mankind's victory over the Kilrathi was a fluke makes sense in that context. I wonder if he would've made that same statement if the Behemoth succeeded? My guess is no.
 
Mjr. Whoopass said:
Perhaps Tolwyn had similar feelings of frustration over the Behemoth's failure and the T-Bomb's success. His WCIV quote that mankind's victory over the Kilrathi was a fluke makes sense in that context. I wonder if he would've made that same statement if the Behemoth succeeded? My guess is no.
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Puting it in the context that Kilrah was blown out by a very big gun (if Behemoth would have succeded), yes, the image would be a little different (kind of a "death star")
 
I have to disagree with that - Neither the Behemoth nor the T-bomb would truly satisfy Tolwyn. The problem is, in neither plan do we outfight the Kilrathi, instead we exploit their unstable homeworld and a convinient backdoor jump point. In a straight fight, humanity will lose, because the Kilrathi are the better warriors.

What Tolwyn wanted to see was the confed fleet beating the Kilrathi all the way back to Kilrah, the marines taking the planet by force and then all other Kilrathi worlds similarly conquered. What he got instead was the confederation beiing beaten, but winning through trickery. You cant count on the next enemy having a vulnerability like that.
 
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